Do the Word

We’ve proposed that measurement in Transformational Giving (TG) must measure the evidence of the work of Christ in our champions and partners in relation to the specific cause God has given us to champion.

Now we’re systematically working through objections to that idea, focusing today on the contention that such measurement would be too subjective or soft to be useful.

On the face of it, that objection makes a lot of sense and is not as easy to dismiss as some TG practitioners might think.

After all, in traditional/transactional fundraising (ttf), gross income–the 800 pound gorilla of all measurements–may be a lot of things, but it’s certainly not subjective.

Or is it?

Fascinatingly, the very problem with using gross income as an “objective” measure in TG is that it is anything but objective!

Here’s why:

• Remember that in TG, as we noted above, we are seeking to measure the evidence of the work of Christ in our champions and partners in relation to the specific cause God has given us to champion.
• Our focus must thus be at the level of each individual partner and champion, not our organization as a whole.
• A measurement like gross income, however, is an aggregate measure; it doesn’t measure growth or decline on an individual basis.
• As a result, gross income taken on its own obscures what we are trying to measure, which is individual growth; that is, our overall income may be going up while the majority of champions and partners whom we are coaching either remain stagnant or actually decline in relation to the cause.

It’s not hard to envision a multitude of scenarios in which this result (gross income going up while champion/partner maturity in relation to the cause stagnates or declines).

Take for purposes of simple illustration:

• A year in which an organization received a big estate gift, or
• A year in which one partner or champion made a substantial gift that significantly raised gross income, or
• A year where we simply sent out twice as many appeal letters.

In each of these cases it would be erroneous to say, “Gross income is up; our partners and champions must be maturing in the cause”. That judgment is not only subjective (i.e., it’s an opinion, unsubstantiated by factual analysis), but it will quickly strike every thinking person as clearly wrong.

That’s why even though Transformational Giving (TG) would be expected over time to increase an organization’s gross income (i.e., as more champions and partners grow comprehensively in relation to the cause, one dimension of that growth would be in the generosity and effectiveness of their giving in relation to the cause), gross income can never assume the measurement primacy in TG that it has enjoyed in ttf: It simply can’t reveal to us what we need to know, namely, at an individual champion/partner level, who is growing? And why?

The latter question–why–is one that ttf simply could care less about, yet it’s central to TG.

For example, there are good kinds of growth and bad kinds of growth when it comes to giving in relation to the cause. If I simply transfer my giving from church to nonprofit–which Barna indicates is happening to a staggering and accelerating degree–ttf won’t be able to detect this. It will simply celebrate that income to my nonprofit is going up.

Sum it up and say:

The very problem with gross income as a measure is its subjectivity. It simply doesn’t tell us what we absolutely must know to operate a TG development program. And it obscures vital trends in giving until they are too late for us to address.

This is exactly where we find ourselves today, and the problems with our ttf approach to measurement–even after we embrace TG–are going to become more and more apparent every year.

So is subjectivity in measurement simply a non-unique disadvantage? In other words, are we forced to conclude that all measurements in development, whether ttf or TG, are simply more or less subjective?

By no means.

Let’s take the case of Dare2Share Ministries, the youth evangelism training organization of which I am a board member.

Let’s say as part of its TG measurements Dare2Share determined to measure the number of its champions who led another individual to Christ in the past year. One need not fear subjectivity in such a measurement. One would simply need to make the inquiry of each champion, “Have you led another individual to Christ in the past year?”

Now the extremely astute mind reading blog reader will quickly ask, “Well, sure, but who’s to say that leading an individual to Christ is an objective measurement of growth in relation to the cause of youth evangelism training? Isn’t it a subjective act to say what constitutes growth in the cause?”

Well played, extremely astute mind reading blog reader! You’ve just derived for yourself the centrality of the following TG principle:

The definition of what counts as Christian maturity in relation to the cause must be derived from scripture, not from our own opinions or preferences.

Our own preferences in this regard have proven to be woefully unscriptural and organization-centric, enabling us, for example, to have members of our boards of directors who have given us a lot of money but who are patently immature in relation to our cause.

Or we say, “Well, sure, Norma has never visited a prisoner. But she has faithfully folded our newsletters every month for twenty years!” That makes Norma fully formed in Christ in relation to the spiritual discipline of newsletter folding, but most assuredly not fully formed in Christ in relation to the spiritual discipline of visiting those who are sick or in prison (which, according to Ephesians 4:12, was the spiritual discipline we were supposed to be equipping her to mature in, if our cause is prison or hospital visitation).

Sum it up and say:

Not only are we capable of objective measurements in relation to the cause (e.g., Which of our champions have led someone to Christ this year? Which of our champions have visited someone in the hospital or the prison this year?), but by grounding our estimation of what constitutes full cause-maturity in Christ in the scripture and not in our own organizational preferences, we eliminate another area where ttf is hopelessly subjective–and subject to our organizational idolatry (i.e., Whatever is good for our organization must constitute maturity in relation to the cause).

There is one other area on which we need to touch in this discussion of subjectivity and measurement: champion/partner surveys and interviews.

When we turn our attention to building specific scripture-derived TG measurements for comprehensive Christ-maturity in relation to our cause, we will inevitably be relying more on the self-reporting of our champions and partners. (Witness this discussion of a World Vision survey as what I would call a step in the right direction.)

Isn’t self-reporting notoriously subjective?

Here we need to distinguish between two definitions of subjective, courtesy of that lexical powerhouse known as dictionary.com.

One definition of subjective is: pertaining to or characteristic of an individual; personal; individual: a subjective evaluation.

If this is what is meant by subjective, then we are happily guilty as charged. A key purpose of TG is to help partners and champions understand what full maturity in the cause looks like as defined by scripture, and then to evaluate where we stand in relation to that full maturity, and then to grow in and by the grace of God toward that full measure.

Growth in the cause, in other words, isn’t whatever we say it is or wish it was. It’s what the scripture says it is, and what the Holy Spirit is inviting us toward.

A second definition of subjective is: placing excessive emphasis on one’s own moods, attitudes, opinions, etc.; unduly egocentric.

Understanding the difference between these two definitions of subjective is indeed vital to successfully measuring comprehensive Christ-growth in relation to the cause: We must embrace the first understanding of subjective while being vigilant to guard against the second.

Scripture as our definer of full cause-maturity in Christ will be crucial to our not falling victim to this unwanted kind of subjectivity. But the topic–and the objections attendant to it–deserves its own post.

That’s why in our next post we’ll be dealing with the third objection to TG measurement: the concern voiced by some that the process of measuring divine activity is likely to turn us into legalists.

In yesterday’s post we proposed that Transformational Giving involves a repentant turning away from measuring human (organizational) strength and health and power (which is exactly what traditional/transactional fundraising measures) and turning toward measurements we make of God’s divine strength and health and power that are presently observable in our champions and partners in relation to the cause God has given us to steward.

We noted three philosophical objections to this approach that we need to deal with before we flesh out the practical workings of such a system.

The first is the idea that God’s activity is not easily detectable or definable (especially as compared to traditional transaction fundraising measurements like gross income, recency/frequency/monetary categorizations of giving, and wealth screenings).

This is the criticism of pragmatism, to which we now turn our attention.

Have you ever considered that Jesus began his public ministry by announcing a standard of measurement related to Himself?

According to Luke 4:14-21, that’s exactly what happened:

Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. He taught in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.
He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

This was more than Jesus’ opening monologue, as is clear a few chapters later when an imprisoned John the Baptist asked whether Jesus was The One. Of all the ways Jesus could have responded, isn’t it fascinating in Luke 7:18-23 that Jesus responded…by making reference to his earlier measurement?

John’s disciples told him about all these things. Calling two of them, he sent them to the Lord to ask, “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?”When the men came to Jesus, they said, “John the Baptist sent us to you to ask, ‘Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?’ ”

At that very time Jesus cured many who had diseases, sicknesses and evil spirits, and gave sight to many who were blind. So he replied to the messengers, “Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor. Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.”

And lest any of us protest, ‘Well, yeah, but that was Jesus!“, he foreclosed that option in John 14:12:

I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.

In fact, He indicated in Matthew 7:15-20 that both the fruit of following Him–and the fruit of not following Him–would be observable not only to God, but to discerning believers:

“Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them [emphasis mine].

Someone might quote John 3:8 (“The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit”) to suggest that God’s activity is not easily detectable or definable. But in that verse Jesus is not claiming that we won’t recognize God’s work when we see it; rather, He is claiming that God’s work is not subject to human structures or boundaries–another blow to traditional/transactional fundraising (ttf) measurements, which only measure activity within the human structure/boundary known as the nonprofit organization.

For example, if a champion gives money to the cause outside of the nonprofit organization, no ttf measurement will detect it nor care to, except it register (ironically) as a failure or a lost opportunity–a gift we didn’t get.

By contrast, TG’s measurement of God’s activity in champions and partners does not require that the activity happen through the nonprofit, because TG measurements are measurements of God’s activity in the organization’s champions and partners, not in the organization itself. The organization is just the tomato trellis–vital to the growth of healthy tomatoes, but not the subject of our measurements (except–and we’ll cover this down the road–insofar as we seek to determine if we are an effective trellis).

This is a second stark contrast between TG and ttf measurements: Not only are ttf measurements focused on human strength and health and power (whereas TG measurements are focused on God’s strength and health and power), but

• ttf measurements are trained on the organization
• TG measurements are trained on the organization’s champions and partners

Others might protest that Jesus’ statement in John 20:29, “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed”, is an admonition against looking for observable proof of God’s presence. But note that Transformational Giving measurement is not measurement designed to produce belief in unbelievers; instead, it is a process of collaborative measurement and discernment undertaken by a Christian ministry and its individual champions and partners that is designed to help those specific champions and partners grow to full maturity in Christ in relation to the cause.

In other words, what’s at issue in TG measurement is not conversion but sanctification.

In Matthew 13:31-33 Jesus tells parables about yeast and mustard seeds, two entities barely observable at first. Two lessons can be drawn:

1. God’s work in the lives of our champions may be barely observable at first, but it is well worth our keen observation;
2. By God’s grace that barely observable work can grow until it is apparent to everyone.

So yes, it is true that God’s work in the lives of our champions may not initially be visible to the naked or untrained eye. This is exactly why Jesus exhorts us in Mark 13:37:

What I say to you, I say to everyone: ‘Watch!’

And so does The God of Measure-become-flesh overcome Objection 1 and command us to train our attention–and, yes, even (and perhaps especially) our development measurements–away from human strength and health and power and toward God’s own activity in relation to the cause, slowly beginning to emerge into the visible realm in the lives of our champions and partners.

In yesterday’s post we concluded that God despises measurements that draw attention to human strength and power and capacity because they tempt us to base our decisions on human strength and power and capacity.

Those kind of measurements pretty well define the purpose of measurement in traditional/transactional fundraising (ttf).

The most pragmatic (and honest) among us will be quick to protest, ‘But surely you’re not saying we shouldn’t track daily income or the results of a direct mail appeal?’

And you’re right: Surely I’m not saying that. See my census example from yesterday for a bit of clarification.

What I am saying, though, is that what God despises is when we base our decisions on human strength and power and capacity…which is typically why we track daily income and the results of our direct mail appeals in the first place. It’s also why we do wealth screening, why we categorize our donors as regular, middle, and major, and why we choose certain fundraising strategies over others: because they maximize human power, strength, and capacity.

And that’s scripturally problematic.

So what’s the alternative to basing decisions on human strength and power and capacity?

Well, let’s move quickly to assert that it’s definitely not the kind of ‘faith budgeting’ Christian nonprofits do when they stick an extra $300,000 in their income line without any idea where it’s coming from and say, ‘We’re believing for that by faith.’ (For information on budgeting and TG, by the way, check out this previous post.)

The alternative to basing decisions on human strength and power and capacity…is to base decisions on God’s strength and power and capacity as presently evident in your network of champions and partners.

In other words, measure not human activity in human beings but rather divine activity in human beings–the parts of Christ that ‘show through them’ in relation to the cause.

Interestingly, that’s what the scriptures show God measuring:

• Sometimes He measures the absence of divine activity (like in Matthew 23:32, where Jesus challenges, ‘Fill up, then, the measure of the sin of your forefathers!’).
• Sometimes He measures the inhibition of divine activity (like in Hebrews 5:12, where the writer castigates, ‘In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food!’).
• But most often scripture shows God measuring His own presence in us.

The perfect illustration of the last point is 2 Peter 1:3-9. Give it a careful read in light of the subject of what we measure:

His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins [emphasis mine].

Evidence of Christ showing through us in increasing measure: that’s the very reality pointed to by our ‘touchstone’ Transformational Giving passage, Ephesians 4:. Check it out also in relation to the subject of what we measure:

It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ [emphasis mine].

The typical responses to the proposal that TG should measure divine activity in humans (rather than human activity in humans) are that:

1. God’s activity is not easily detectable or definable
2. Such measurement would by nature be far too subjective
3. The process of measuring divine activity is likely to turn us into legalists because of our subjective measurements and God’s indetectability/indefinability

But do such concerns stand up to scriptural scrutiny? And are there ways for us to detect and measure increases of the kind written about in the quotes from 2 Peter and Ephesians, above?

No to the first question. Yes to the second. Onward to tomorrow for the next installment of Adventures In Measurement!